:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/the-phoenician-scheme-Benicio-Del-Toro-Michael-Cera-Mia-Threapleton-060425-112e8b4aad0445678a882b70efdec816.jpg)
- Director Wes Anderson explains how he devised the numerous artful assassination attempts in The Phoenician Scheme.
- The goal, he says, was to make them “both brutal and visceral literally, but it ought to be sort of delighting the audience.”
- Plus, he explains how he decided to show someone “be blown literally in half.”
Of course, Wes Anderson would find a way to make violence look like art.
This oddly specific gift is on full display in The Phoenician Scheme, which is, per critics, the auteur’s most violent entry yet. This is because the film, which Anderson both wrote (alongside Roman Coppola) and directed, centers on wealthy business tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), who, thanks to his often ruthless deal-making, has become a frequent target of assassination attempts.
Though admittedly macabre, each attempt — think plane crashes, elevator ambushes, and even death by quicksand — features trademark Andersonian humor and comical loopholes to Korda’s safety, that, gruesome or not, can’t help but make one smile.
When asked which was the most fun to “craft,” Anderson first decides that he likes this way of thinking about it. “That’s interesting — to ‘craft’ an assassination. It’s true. Probably an assassin has to craft an assassination just as much as a movie director has to,” he tells Entertainment Weekly.
He continues, “There are so many options, and with this one, early on we felt this character is surrounded by violence and he carries a certain violence just in his body, and somehow we thought that this violence is expressed almost like little magic tricks or something, that there needed to be something both brutal and visceral literally, but it ought to be sort of delighting the audience to see these terrible things that happen.”
Focus Features
After all, as Anderson points out, Korda is someone who gives hand grenades as a welcome present throughout the film. So, which attempt on Korda’s life came to the director most vividly? “There’s one at the very beginning in which his assistant secretary is blown in half. And that was the first one we did, and that one kind of helped guide us in how we might communicate the violence as we were going through this movie,” Anderson explains of the scene, which ends with the assistant’s legs still sitting upright in his seat, seemingly undisturbed by the blast that took the poor man’s upper half.
Or, as Anderson describes the vision: “There’s going to be a lot of blood. There’s going to be a very loud explosion. This person is going to be blown literally in half, but the legs, the feet, the shoes might stay fairly comfortably in place. It might be a clean break, and I think an artful splatter — something about that set the tone for the violence that fills the movie.”
Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.
The Phoenician Scheme also stars Michael Cera, Mia Threapleton, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis.
The film is now playing in theaters.
